Medical practitioners, such as military medics, civilian emergency-medical personnel, nurses, and/or physicians, routinely perform medical and/or medical and/or vascular-access procedures (e.g., intravenous insertion, central venous line placement and/or peripherally-inserted central catheter, etc). It is desirable for a practitioner to be proficient at performing these procedures since a proficient practitioner is less likely to injure a patient and/or is almost certain to reduce a patient's level of discomfort.
Becoming proficient in medical and/or medical and/or vascular-access procedures requires practice. In fact, a certification and/or re-certification requirements of some states mandate a minimal number of needle sticks, etc., per year per provider. Historically, medical practitioners practiced needle-based procedures on live volunteers. More recently, simulation techniques and/or devices have been developed to provide training in medical and/or vascular-access procedures optionally without a use of live volunteers.
Some medical and/or vascular-access simulation systems that are in background publications include an interface device and/or a data processing system. To practice a medical and/or vascular-access procedure, a user manipulates an “instrument,” which extends from a device and/or serves as a catheter-needle. Potentiometers and/or encoders within an interface device track a motion and/or position of an instrument and/or relay this information to a data processing system. A data processing system performs a simulation of a structure and/or substructure of human anatomy, and/or determines a effect of an instrument's motion on a the anatomy. Simulated results are displayed by a data processing system. Using a motion information from an interface device, a data processing system also generates a control signal that controls a force-feedback system that is coupled to an instrument. A force-feedback system generates various resistive and/or reactive forces that are intended to simulate a forces that are experienced by a medical practitioner during an actual medical and/or vascular-access procedure. A user senses these forces during manipulation of an instrument.
Although some systems in background publications have a ability to simulate medical procedures like percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI), they are of limited value in assisting the medical professionals to prepare for their upcoming procedures since those systems don't have the capability to rapidly build a simulation based on the incoming patient's unique anatomy. Without the ability to build patient-specific simulations rapidly, those systems cannot provide decision support during mission-critical procedures like cardiac catheterization. As a result, physicians relies mostly on subjective pattern recognition and subjective quantification of key features to diagnose and treat patients.
The inability of prior medical and/or vascular-access simulation systems to realistically simulate a medical and/or vascular-access procedure for incoming patients limits their usefulness as training and/or accreditation tools.